Andalusia

Andalusia is the historic home where American author Flannery O'Connor lived from 1951 until her death from lupus in 1964. This is where she was living when she completed her two novels and two collections of short stories. Andalusia is open to the public Thursday through Sunday from 10am to 5pm. For more information, call 478-454-4029.
Blog contributors include Executive Director, Elizabeth Wylie, and a variety of scholars and authors. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of Andalusia Farm.

Friday, January 22, 2016

I had forgotten
to commemorate the occasion properly at the first of the month, but it’s been
right at a year since we held our first peacock funeral, very nicely summed up
here by Kay Powell for the Bitter
Southerner.It was rainy last
January, too, and likely as cold.Fresh
off the first Sunday of my tenure as interim choir director for the First United
Methodist Church, I led a rather rainy, squishy processional to the burial site
and was deeply unprepared for the challenges in walking and singing while being
out of shape.Nevertheless, I was
pleased that those in attendance were familiar with the first two verses and
refrain of “I’ll Fly Away.” Even the
cadre of collegians from Mercer who braved the unfortunate weather were
undaunted by the ways of their cousins from down the hill in Milledgeville. It
was indeed a situation right out of an O’Connor story, and I wager she’d have
had a chuckle or two at us had she been in attendance.

Since then,
Manley Pointer II has taken up the place of his namesake and is proving to be
as big of a hit with our guests. Manley II is young yet; I’ve seen him doing
laps around the aviary, and I know now how the assessment of Flannery’s visitor
so many years ago came about: “I bet that rascal could outrun a bus.” Joy/Hulga,
older and no doubt well-versed in the ways of aviary life, tends to give him
sidelong looks and is no doubt bemused at the ways of her new companion.He has opened his tail once while I’ve been
on duty at the farm; the feathers are short and his strut is a bit too
exuberant to be called such. But the sight is remarkable nevertheless—no doubt
practice for Spring and a new crop of feathers.

The prideful
ways of the peacock are a frequent topic in Flannery’s prose, but I believe
that the pride of a peacock is in equal share a projection of our pride and
self-assurance onto the bird putting itself on display in its strut.I think here of Father Flynn in “The
Displaced Person,” who is so deeply in thrall to the display of feathers that
divinity is made anew each time he sees them, when he clearly has a decent
grasp of God’s nature if his discussions with the troubled Mrs. McIntyre are
any indication. We relish the peacock’s confidence, even moreso if it’s a display
by one so young and brash. In that spirit we at the farm are proud indeed of
Manley II, and for the growth yet to come for him and for Andalusia in 2016.

Daniel Wilkinson is a Visitor Services Assistant, Man-About-Town, and Bon Vivant at Andalusia. He is no longer choir director at First United Methodist Church, but has his baton at the ready if duty calls once more.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Happy
New Year to all of you from the staff at Andalusia. We’ve got all manner of new
things on tap for 2016, some of which were in the most recent newsletter, which
you can get by subscribing via the contact form at the bottom of the landing
page for andalusiafarm.org. 2015 was a banner year indeed, and more is to come
in 2016.

First
of all, we’re pleased to welcome a new Visitor Services Manager, Ross Sheppard,
to the fold after the promotion of April Carlson to Assistant Director.Milledgeville needs to keep the young and
talented within its confines, and Ross’s return from a sojourn in Athens is a
sign that one can indeed go home again. A promotion to Bon Vivant may well be in the
cards if he proves himself after the several years of training requisite of the
position.

Not as
recent of an arrival but equally as exciting is that of Manley Pointer II, our
new peacock in the aviary.Almost
exactly a year ago, Manley I succumbed to “January’s arctic blast,” as put by
Kay Powell for the Bitter Southerner.
Manley II is still a young fellow; those tailfeathers aren’t yet at their full
complement. He will strut occasionally, no doubt practicing for springtime.He joins Joy/Hulga, who is no doubt delighted
to have some company.

In
terms of non-living additions, a new program space is in the backyard. The Nail
House Deck now occupies the location of the storage building behind the
house.Long a casualty of a fallen tree,
the Nail House gave way in the Fall to a proper outdoor stage that will no
doubt be well-used when warm weather returns. Keep a sharp eye on our social
media pages for these events in the coming months.

During the
cooler months, however, the programming remains inside with the February Four
Lecture Series. This year’s set will discuss Wise Blood during every Sunday afternoon in February and comes on
the heels of last year’s very well-attended series. Those who were unable to
attend in person did so in spirit via the podcast, and they will have that same
chance this year. These lectures are no
doubt a good excuse to give another look at the novel, one that I haven’t
revisited as often as I should have over the years.So too, if you’ve not seen the film version
of Wise Blood, copies of it are on offer
here in the gift shop.The film has
grown on me over the years, as Brad Dourif’s image is the one that comes to
mind when I think of Hazel Motes.I am
further fascinated by Macon as it looked in the early 1970s; one can actually
rent out Haze’s apartment to this day in a house not far from Mercer
University.

There’s much to anticipate
in the coming year. Meeting all the Andalusia
“pilgrims” as I like to call them remains a delight each time I come to the
farm, and as much as we offer in programming, I find that the visitors keep this
place fresh for me. Even if I have to do
a little “mission work” as far as Flannery’s fiction goes, welcoming these
folks to the farm and to Milledgeville is the central delight that the special
programs help to bring about. Thus, Happy New Year, and I’ll see you shortly
out here on the farm.

Daniel Wilkinson is a Visitor Services Assistant and Bon Vivant at Andalusia Farm. When not greeting visitors and consulting with peafowl on the important issues of the day, he can be found with still more museum visitors at the Old Capital Museum and Brown-Stetson-Sanford House.